All the President’s Tax Frauds

Do read the blockbuster report out by the New York Times on the Trump Family Taxes.

Mr. Trump won the presidency proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire, and he has long insisted that his father, the legendary New York City builder Fred C. Trump, provided almost no financial help.

But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.

Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.

This all might have been criminal at the time, but unfortunately it’s all past the statute of limitations.

By age 3, Mr. Trump was earning $200,000 a year in today’s dollars from his father’s empire. He was a millionaire by age 8. By the time he was 17, his father had given him part ownership of a 52-unit apartment building. Soon after Mr. Trump graduated from college, he was receiving the equivalent of $1 million a year from his father. The money increased with the years, to more than $5 million annually in his 40s and 50s.

Horatio Alger would have been proud.

Fred Trump was relentless and creative in finding ways to channel this wealth to his children. He made Donald not just his salaried employee but also his property manager, landlord, banker and consultant. He gave him loan after loan, many never repaid. He provided money for his car, money for his employees, money to buy stocks, money for his first Manhattan offices and money to renovate those offices. He gave him three trust funds. He gave him shares in multiple partnerships. He gave him $10,000 Christmas checks. He gave him laundry revenue from his buildings.

Much of his giving was structured to sidestep gift and inheritance taxes using methods tax experts described to The Times as improper or possibly illegal. Although Fred Trump became wealthy with help from federal housing subsidies, he insisted that it was manifestly unfair for the government to tax his fortune as it passed to his children. When he was in his 80s and beginning to slide into dementia, evading gift and estate taxes became a family affair, with Donald Trump playing a crucial role, interviews and newly obtained documents show.

Truly inspiring.

The most overt fraud was All County Building Supply & Maintenance, a company formed by the Trump family in 1992. All County’s ostensible purpose was to be the purchasing agent for Fred Trump’s buildings, buying everything from boilers to cleaning supplies. It did no such thing, records and interviews show. Instead All County siphoned millions of dollars from Fred Trump’s empire by simply marking up purchases already made by his employees. Those millions, effectively untaxed gifts, then flowed to All County’s owners — Donald Trump, his siblings and a cousin. Fred Trump then used the padded All County receipts to justify bigger rent increases for thousands of tenants.

Good ol’ American ingenuity, huh?

All told, The Times documented 295 streams of revenue that Fred Trump created over five decades to enrich his son. In most cases his four other children benefited equally. But over time, as Donald Trump careened from one financial disaster to the next, his father found ways to give him substantially more money, records show. Even so, in 1990, according to previously secret depositions, Mr. Trump tried to have his father’s will rewritten in a way that Fred Trump, alarmed and angered, feared could result in his empire’s being used to bail out his son’s failing businesses.

How heart warming. And there’s lots and lots more. So much more. And as you read it, keep reminding yourself that if Dems take back the House, the head of the House Financial Services Committee will be Maxine Waters. And Maxine Waters could subpoena all of Trump’s bank records and tax returns.

See also this Forbes article about how Trump is trying but failing to make money off the presidency. So much winning.

12 thoughts on “All the President’s Tax Frauds

  1. Once again this would sink any presidency, but not this one. Forgive me for using a scatological reference but………..Trump has smeared so much sh#t on every person, institution, political and societal norm, everything we use gauge public perception, so much sh#t that all anyone can hear, see or smell is sh#t. How is this worse than anything else?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWju37TZfo0

  2.  He gave him $10,000 Christmas checks.

    Well, not exactly the gift of the magi.  You can't give what you don't have. So that would explain why Trump is so devoid of good character and honesty. I hate to come off as a bible thumper, but when the bible says… The sins of the father are visited upon the son (and daughter) . I can't help but say amen to that. It's like a generational curse where they suck the life blood of decency, empathy, compassion, and basic humanity from their progeny.

     

  3. “if Dems take back the House, the head of the House Financial Services Committee will be Maxine Waters. And Maxine Waters could subpoena all of Trump’s bank records and tax returns.”

    I would say “ain’t karma a bitch”, but I don’t mean that the way it sounds; I’m a fan of Maxine Waters.

  4. Given all that's been written over the last two years, and even before that, regarding Trump's finances, his six bankruptcies and his reliance on Russian money since the banks won't touch him, and not to mention that he's had a death grip on his tax returns, you'd almost have to be a tree stump for this to be a surprise.

  5. …if Dems take back the House, the head of the House Financial Services Committee will be Maxine Waters.

    That put a smile on my fact this morning! Trump and the wingnuts will go crazy as she takes a central role in exposing this dirt.

  6. I have read that there is no statute of limitations for civil tax fraud. There needs to be an investigation. Bigly. Nothing would be sweeter than the IRS taking Trump for everything he's got.

  7. I love Maxine Waters.  She doesn't hide her contempt for Trump.  If she becomes in a position to expose Trump, he should be very, very afraid.

  8.  Hmm..

    Soon, will we be able to add tRUMP's name to Al Capone's on the answer to people who ask, "Hey,  beside Al Capone, do you know another big-time crook who got busted for cheating on his taxes?  Yeah! tRUMP!  And not just Donnie – but all of 'em"

    LOCK THEM UP!!!!!

Comments are closed.